`Well, if you got an invitation for a few days in a very nice villa in a nice location, I suppose we would probably all take it," said Mr Ahern yesterday.

Indeed we probably would, but unlike the Tanaiste and the Minister for Finance, most of us didn't get one this year. And unlike most of us, Ms Mary Harney and Mr Charlie McCreevy are bound by guidelines for Government ministers which state clearly in their first sentence:

"All office holders are expected to adhere to the fundamental principle that an offer of gifts, hospitality or services should not be accepted where it would, or might appear to, place him or her under an obligation."

How exactly does the Taoiseach think it appears when two government ministers, who may shortly take part in decisions which could substantially enrich a particular individual, spend part of their summer holidays free of charge at his villa in Provence?

Mr Ulick McEvaddy and his brother Des have proposals to build a private terminal at Dublin Airport in competition with the State-owned Aer Rianta, and have also sought Government support to oppose EU regulations limiting aircraft noise which would damage their business. It is a company controlled by Mr Ulick McEvaddy that owns the villa near Nice at which the Ministers stayed.

The Labour leader, Mr Ruairi Quinn, yesterday described Mr Ahern's response to the controversy as "flippant".

Indeed Mr Ahern's tone represented a continuation of the Government line when the story first broke, that this was "plumbing the depths of the silly season" and that holidays are private matters.

Politicians' holidays are not automatically private matters, as the French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing discovered in the 1970s when his private shooting holiday in the Central African Republic with its dictator Emperor Bokassa became highly publicised.

Who pays for ministers' holidays can be a matter of public interest. The Government guidelines for its own ministers specifically refer to travel and the free loan of property "either within the State or abroad" as matters covered by the guidelines.

However, the Taoiseach yesterday morning continued to suggest the matter was entirely trivial. "I am not concerned at all," he said. "The story that I have is that my colleagues spent a few days, I don't even know how long, in a house owned by somebody else in some form or another. I don't see anything wrong in that.

"Only some of us would feel envious that we didn't get the invitation, but from a politician's point of view nobody is asking any other questions about anybody else in Irish society, what they did for the summer."

Mr Ahern's cheery dismissiveness of the matter may reflect his belief that neither Ms Harney nor Mr Mc Creevy will be influenced in their decisions on aviation policy by virtue of having spent a week or so in a Provencal villa owned by a key player in that industry.

Indeed Ms Harney has been enthusiastic about plans to develop the Air Corps facility at Baldonnel in west Dublin as a second commercial airport in the capital, a plan which could in fact conflict with the McEvaddys' proposals.

It is believed the holiday arrangements were not made directly between Mr McEvaddy and the two Ministers, but by another member of the party who went on holidays with Ms Harney who is a good friend of Mr McEvaddy's wife. The benign interpretation is that the arrangement was based simply on friendship rather than on any wish to be nice to Government ministers because they are ministers.

However, the political scandals of recent years have made such explanations of relationships between business people and politicians less credible.

Mr Charles Haughey has been disgraced, Mr Ray Burke had to resign, a number of other politicians are sweating as they await the progress of the Flood and Moriarty tribunals. Politicians canvassing in June's local elections all reported hearing on the doorsteps the cynicism many members of the public feel about politicians.

The news of two Ministers holidaying in the French villa of an Irish businessman is unlikely to impress these people, even if this businessman was not seeking Government decisions that would favour him. There is no suggestion that Mr McEvaddy did anything at all improper in extending hospitality to Ms Harney or Mr McCreevy.

There is, however, much more than a suggestion that Ms Harney and Mr McCreevy were politically foolish in accepting this hospitality - surely as experienced politicians they must have for a moment considered the perception their holiday could create? More seriously, it certainly appears that they broke the Government's own guidelines.

This is not the first time Mr McEvaddy's generosity has been availed of by politicians. In August last year, when the Fine Gael leader, Mr John Bruton, was on holiday in west Cork, the Omagh bomb happened and Mr Bruton wanted to fly to the town to attend the memorial service.

Mr McEvaddy offered to fly Mr Bruton to Omagh for the occasion. Fine Gael's general secretary Mr Tom Curran maintained yesterday that this was therefore a gift to the Fine Gael party rather than a personal gift.

This distinction is much less important than Fine Gael suggested. If a business person wished to give a gift in order to win political influence - and again it must be stressed that nobody has suggested that Mr McEvaddy gave gifts for any reason other than personal generosity - what matter if the gift is given to a political party rather than to an individual?

Fine Gael and Labour said yesterday they would continue to press the Government to address the issue of a breach of the Cabinet guidelines.

Mr Ahern, however, has indicated he will not consider the matter as other than trivial. Asked yesterday if he believed the two Ministers in question should now absent themselves from any Cabinet decisions on matters relevant to Mr McEvaddy, he said: "Not at all, if the Ministers had any questions to answer, they will answer it in their forms, but that is a question that they have to look at. On the face of it, I don't think that they have."